Staying Creative

Staying creative can be hard with the tossernet, phone, TV and radio always out to distract you. Sometimes all you wanna do is cuddle up in front of the gas fire with Hugh Jackman on the box, or have a duvet day with the curtains drawn, or catapult some dogshit walkers with ice cubes, or whatever floats your boat, and that’s dandy. You may dry up like a prune and take up to a whole year off from any innovative production at all, but you know you’ll return to your craft, your calling, eventually, don’t cha? Don't cha though...?

Fulltime writers have my utterest most respect. To be immersed in words even part time, four hours a day, is enviable. That’s a goal of mine, e-vent-u-ally, to be a part time writer. Perhaps more than a goal. Perhaps a salvation. There are dudes out there doing a lot more too, for laughs. Any more than 8 hours and you are basically tapping into a collective subconscious with a pen in your hand. Remote viewing is the psychic term. There’s no disputing the most prolific author in the world, however. That has to be Richard Laymon. He’s so practised at churning out books, he’s been doing it even after his death. Now that’s what I call prolific.

Imagination is one thing, but work ethic is another entirely. A good case of the  latter is rarer. Together, they forge a formidable combination. Authors like Jeffrey Deaver and John Grisham who have had previous careers in law have took to the novel business like ducks to water. Our Jeffers stands at the island in his kitchen and works through his 8 month outlines on his feet! Is it 8 months he spends on an outline? Don’t hold me to it, but I can’t be too far off ya know.

Steve King [I keep mentioning this guy’s name! Does he need all this free advertising? Not in the slightest. Does he deserve it? Abso-bloody-lutely], says he would shoot himself if he had to write full time. It would be overkill. And in the words of Lorenzo Quinn, the best sculptor in the world, for me, “It is the sum of one’s talents that makes the artist.” Did you know Steve King plays guitar in a band? I’d be very surprised if all writers were not good at something else as well. Everyone is good at something, but no one is good at everything.

Stagnation in one area of your creative wellspring can easily be solved with some diversifying flirtations with another of your passions. Clive Barker, originally of Liverpool, says that he finds the world of paint a glorious polar opposite after toiling with the grammatical rigidities of the alphabet. To cast aside those troublesome 26 letters and pick up a paintbrush, while still remaining in your creative element, is indeed a universe apart. Like a sportsman, in a way, leaving the field for the pool, or the decathlete, swapping one event for another. Like those Jacks of all Trades you may have met in your working life at one point; we all know that kind of guy who has built his own house...the one whose van looks like a D.I.Y store exploded in the back of it? That's right, the one with the leather tool belt and Gore Tex work boots! We are 'remote viewing' together here now see, a ha! I picture one called Barry, who does renovations, and pays double on Bank Holiday weekends. See ya.

Remember, a change is like a rest.

unfurl like cards in freefall